


The Release of Selinuntius

by Nedrika



Category: Hashire Melos! (1992)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blow Jobs, Breathplay, Double Penetration, F/M, Father/Son Incest, Frottage, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Inferiority Complex, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Multi, Non-Sexual Slavery, Oral Sex, Pederasty, Post-Canon, Spit As Lube, Spitroasting, Surgery, Threesome - F/M/M, Trust Issues, Vaginal Sex, Whump, Yuleporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:34:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nedrika/pseuds/Nedrika
Summary: They're broken, but not beyond repair.
Relationships: Melos/Selinuntius, Melos/Selinuntius/Raisa
Comments: 16
Kudos: 2
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CorpseBrigadier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/gifts).



> Hello! I picked this up thanks to the Aoi Bungaku version which I love deeply but for very different reasons, and I can't seem to go a day without listening to that gay as all hell theme song. 
> 
> I'm using the names from the Orphan release (I can't believe the LD version came out while I was writing this!)

Selinuntius could feel the anxiety and strain seep from him as they were carried through the streets in triumph, the crowd so loud as to deafen, the atmosphere of victory infectious. Instead of the exhaustion that he would have expected to take their place he was instead filled up with energy, soaking in the light of Melos's grin as dusk fell about their shoulders in a great cloak. Night never reached them; instead they were taken through the winding alleys by the mass of people and dropped at an inn-door and squeezed into the candlelight before they could object. The inn-keeper's best kylix was pressed into Melos's hands, which trembled as he accepted it. Selinuntius felt the euphoric laughter bubbling from him as he watched the obscene glyph at the bottom of its stand come into view as he lifted it, eyes drifting to Melos's thick throat working from the tremendous draught he took and the red rivulets of wine mixing with the clots of blood still clinging to his skin. He revived as he neared the end of the cup and re-emerged smiling and blinking, finally tasting the terrible wine that had been handed to him, and he held the cup out to him by the bowl. His smile was as guileless and beautiful as it had been when he first saw him, cat-scratched and defeated by children, and he accepted the cup by its handles. It was the first perfectly smooth surface he had touched since he gave himself to Dionysius three days before. As their fingers scraped against one another's in the exchange it was ceremonial, the confirmation of a vow. He tipped it towards his own lips.

It truly was awful wine, the best he'd ever tasted and gone in an instant. He had barely wiped his mouth of it before there was a skin jostling at his shoulder and the kylix was full again, a match to another that had appeared in Melos's hand. They raised them high to meet the roar of the crowd and drank deep, this wine dark as ink and barely diluted beyond the minimum allowed by common sense; he peered enthralled over the edge of the black ceramic as great coughs racked Melos's titanic chest as he struggled with the unfamiliar burn of it on his tongue. The crowd gave another cheer as they lowered their kylices to be refilled and the celebrations finally spread through the rest of the gathered people in a great multitude of cups and vintages, the faint pops of opening amphorae lost to the bubble of chatter and the staggering smell of a day in the sun. There was noise; so much deafening noise after three days of only the rhythmic strike of metal to metal, clinks of stone scattering along paving slabs. Time ran in wine and laughter until the darkness spilled in the door and his head span.

Someone was at his ear, talking of revolution and a position at some incendiary table as the huge silhouette in the corner of the room staggered, a trembling drop, and Selinuntius made a noise of apology to his erstwhile host to wend his way through the bodies crushed into the tiny space. He grasped Melos by the elbow, who turned to him with drooping eyes and a half-hearted smile but it was confirmation enough. With the smallest of pulls they were straining towards the door as hollers and slaps followed them out.

Thoughts came smoother in the cool quiet of the pitch dark street, the clamour of others no longer shielding their near naked bodies from the chilled night air, and Melos offered no resistance as he was pulled around the labyrinth of streets and alleyways he had struggled through earlier that evening, down the hill of the acropolis and square to his own little house, unadorned and tucked out of the way in a quiet part of town. He paused at the door and turned to see eyes opened in wonder as he pushed on the heavy panel. The wine sang in him as he pulled Melos in by the ragged, dusty loincloth and navigated them through the familiar darkness, past the drunken snores of Hippo in his cot in the kitchen and to the low wooden bed, one he had so rarely slept in once drunken fits at the yard had become his habit. It was strange to be back, happy and peaceful and leading another, but when he put his hand to Melos's neck and felt the rough leather strap of Raisa's necklace it was natural to lean forward and claim his lips. They were cracked, wine-sharp and blood-bitter, and opened eagerly for him as strong hands grasped roughly at his waist.

He thrust forward, meeting an impressive hardness before he was turned and pressed down to sit on the bed, the pelts rough against the backs of his naked thighs, and Melos lowered himself down to kneel above him; an enormous, heavy outline against the faint starlight in the room. A calloused hand found his face and reverently trailed down it to tangle in the hair at his chin, eyes glowing as their lips met again in quick, hard, sour kisses. He moved his hips, or perhaps Melos did, and then they were both grinding at panting, breath coming hard over each other's shoulders with nips and suckles in a mirror of their embrace at the square. On the hot skin he tasted sweat and mud, bandages rough against his leg, and an echo of the desperation that must have powered Melos ran through him so that he shivered - a full body tremor of a release, a quiet ratcheting down of tension - and as he did he felt wet heat splatter across his face. It made him jump, pushing a fraction closer to the scalding body on top of him before he felt how still it was and looked up at moonlight reflected in terrified eyes as he felt muscles tense and spasm, a giant hand coming up too late to catch all the blood that spluttered and heaved its way out of Melos to speckle their chests.

The light left his eyes slowly, and panic first slowed Selinuntius to a standstill before pushing him to sudden action, arms braced to catch the immense weight that swayed then dropped against him before they awkwardly rolled together to lie on the skins. For one pendulous moment there is nothing, and then the retched blood came again and he could breathe. Extracting himself from shivering limbs curling home he reached for the familiar skin that lay discarded by the foot of the bed and brought it to his dry lips. Melos drank and drank, and it appeared he might never stop until he spluttered and choked, the cough bubbling up through the thin, watery wine. He took in the figure before him for the first time, beaten and bleeding, and slowly understood that there was a lot more here than being tired or thirsty.

He clambered off the bed to comb his house for everything, anything that could help them; the home so seldom seen it was alien even in the sputtering light of the clay lamp he fetched from the kitchen. The low coughs seemed to follow him as he trailed through drawers and bags and bottles before carrying it all back to the bedroom, near missing the lip at the door and bringing it all down with him, cursing himself for an idiot and a lecher.

The motley collection rattled loudly against bare walls as he spread it before him, grunting at the dark before retrieving a second lamp to sit at the head of the bed, carefully out of reach of any spasms Melos could suffer later, and bringing into relief the tortured breathing of the body lain across it.

It had been lunacy, a drunken idiocy to let his passions get in the way as they had when barely a few hours before he'd seen Melos hobble, battered and spent through the crowds before driving a sword against his own breast. He poured out wine from his best skin into his cleanest kylix, mixed through what he had been promised was vinegar and breathed deep. He was no physic, but there would be none would answer the door to him at such an hour and he had no way of knowing what time he had - all he could do was try and remember what had been done the last time a chisel had slipped and found it's way through his leg.

The sponge was black in the subdued orange light of the lamps, yet when he pulled it over broken and bruised skin it seemed to do its job; the clean skin showed every cut and scratch in greater contrast, the wound above his heart lanced so deep through his earlier and crusted slash that it seemed to hang open like a terrible mouth with a black clot throat, and merely looking at it made Selinuntius' own heart throb. Melos recoiled from the stinging liquid with a hiss, the movement in itself pulling another cough and accompanying spray.

He quailed at the prospect of what he had to do, but there was no alternative; he knotted and pulled the thread through the thin needle's eye and spread his forearm along Melos's broad chest, looking deep in panicked eyes.

"You're fine, but I need you to hold still while I get you back together," he said, infusing his voice with all the stoic patience he could muster and receiving a short nod in return.

He brought the needle down. Melos bucked under his arm but he held firm, applying long years with hammer and chisel to keep him in place as he forced the needle to pierce his skin over and over, the stitches tough and tiring as the raw flesh pulled slowly shut. He marvelled at how little it had bled or clotted in the pink wounds and how clean the cuts had been, blades as sharp as his own tools must be, the edges coming clean in a quilt as the most important soul in his life writhed at the pain he administered. There weren't words to issue from his twisting mouth, only small cries, grunts and lost syllables as he moved between stab and slash, ducking close enough to smell the blood and wine on his skin as he bit the thread off. He gave him a minute's rest before heaving him over, Melos weak but attempting to help himself be rolled onto his front, a comforting arm again laid across the taut lines of his back as the biting vinegar mixture was applied again. From his vantage point he could watch as the pain rippled through the muscles in waves, straining and pulling before it eased to a dull ache and he could get a clearer view of what he was doing. Here, the damage was lighter although it still shone a ragged red, and his heart again ached.

Melos sat gentler under the tug of the needle this time, weak from the strain and the protests morphing into words; gasped thanks, a bitten off 'Seline', a huff of exasperation until he was turned back over. His eyes had cleared a little of whatever momentary fever had overtaken him, although when Selinuntius put his hand under the sweat slick hair plastered to his forehead he was the clammy cold of the dead. Of his father - he angrily pushed the thought away.

The needle was abandoned on the bed, ugly knot ready for the next gash, as he made the slow work of unwrapping the bled-through bandages on his thick thigh. The blood was dark and crumbled against his fingertips and slipping to stain the pelts underneath, and as layers of the rough-torn wool were pulled away the stain grew larger. He darted a glance up at Melos, shakily propped up on his elbows, and saw him tense with a whistling sigh as the last layer was teased off, the blood fused and dried into the bandage so that it came free, scab and all, and flowed free again.

"It's deep, a dagger" Melos whispered, slow and deliberate, the pain dripping from his words.

He buried the questions that arose and brought the sponge over it as gently as he could, blood mixing freely with the wine to the point where he could barely see the edges of the wound.

He'd once plunged a chisel straight into muscle in a similar injury - he had been crouched against the rock, taken too shallow an angle with the chisel and skipped off alabaster into his thigh - and in his child's memory it bled for days, great rivers that never dried, and burned like a brand. Since then he'd grown, become used to the pain of slice and divot, and then of broken bones, and yet the memory of that first accident came back to him in a rush.

He brushed it clean once more, absorbed by how the black blood bubbled up after he left it, then picked up the needle. He braced his left hand against the tight muscles of Melos's leg, who nodded his assent, and he pushed it through, practice making the stitches closer and neater even as his slick hand slipped and he had to bring the sponge into his other hand, daubing vinegar to see where to go. When he bent to bite it off he tasted the iron tang, and after the last few daubs the bleeding seemed to slowly stop spilling from between the slabs of his meat.

There was no yarrow, or any other of the various herbs that had been supplied to him when he was Master, and he was too unskilled to attempt to properly bleed the wounds. There was nothing he could do but to cut the bandages, long and ragged from his cleanest tunic, cursing under his breath as the scissors snagged. Melos had sagged now that the strain of the sewing was over, his hands over his eyes as he took ragged gasps, and he made no protest as his leg was gently raised and the first loops of linen came tight against his skin. It was another unsightly knot that finished it, and then had to slowly pull him into an aching sit as he perched on the bedside to bring the cloth in wide swathes round his torso in an attempt to cover all of his angry stitches.

"It didn't hurt so much before," Melos said as he was finally laid back down. "I guess I didn't stay still long enough for it to hit me."

"I guess you didn't," he replied fondly. "Sleep for now, and we'll get someone to look at it tomorrow."

For a moment he imagined that Melos would complain that the pain was too much to sit through, but he closed his eyes as soon as he got the word and within minutes the slow sighs of sleep issued from him.

It wasn't as easy for himself.

Doubt tugged at him, that the medicine would be in vain, that he would wake to a corpse in return for his peace of mind. It would be a hard bargain to accept. If he did die, having proven once and for all that trust was not meaningless, then Selinuntius would have won the battle with his own doubts and found solid ground in the world again, but the war would have been lost alongside the only person who had proven his faith. Would his easy mind last if it was bought on those terms? Would he be able to carve, but only the visions of a once again distorted world?

Had he truly been happy to see his greatest friend arrive in time to kill himself?

The answers eluded him, even as he wore deeper down the wine skin. Behind him Melos tossed in his dreams, noises of protest and flailing limbs proving little distraction to his turmoil until a sharp cry brought him round. The thought of infection and greening limbs struck him, and he spent the hours until dawn mopping sweat from his brow and trying to force clean water through gnashing teeth.

At dawn he wakened a drowsy Hippo and sat him with the sponge at his bedside before kneeling to his forsaken familiar altar, sacrificing to the host of domestic gods in the hope that they would forgive his lapses in prayer and look upon Melos as one of his household. Then into the Acropolis to sacrifice to Asclepius, Apollo and Hermes, each step from his house digging the fear of what he would come back to further into his bones. He begged a sleepy, willowy doctor to follow him home, arms full of celery and herbs, and was relieved to hear the heavy panting cries that meant he wasn't too late yet. Hippo was still on the stool by the bedside, nauseous from wine, the blood on the blankets or both, and he begged leave as soon as they came in the room. Now there was nothing but wait for the doctor to deliver his verdict, and he felt immensely useless now that the burden of responsibility had been removed from him.

In the cool morning light and without the blur of happiness, alcohol or fear he could see the damage far more clearly than in the mad rush of the night before.

Melos must have dragged his body kicking and screaming up the streets of Syracuse. His eye had swollen almost completely shut and discoloured, and the cut to his face stood as a clear red against olive skin. He still wore only his loincloth, and during the night his chest, arms and even down his legs had blossomed into deep blue and purple bruises that overlapped viciously, networked in smaller cuts all across his body. His tired imagination toyed with mythical struggles on the dusty road to Messina, of beasts and of gods. The fantasy had him still studying the patterns of welts and colour so intently that it wasn't until his name rang in his ear that he parted from it.

"The fever will break today, and he'll be ready to walk. Don't let him travel for five, six days or so, and only take the stitches out when the two sides have knit together; a month," the doctor said. All the bandages had been pulled apart, wounds dressed and re-wrapped while he'd daydreamed. "Give him bed rest, warm meals and he'll be up in no time, but come and get me again if he looks as though he's getting worse."

"Thank you," he said, grateful beyond mere words. He dug his coin purse out of the pile Hippo had left him but before he could ask what the charge would be he was waved off.

"Not for Melos," the old man said, a twinkle to his eye. "I know you both. Think of it as payment for the entertainment of seeing our great king chased from the balcony."

He shook off the surprise enough to thank him, grasping his weathered hand tight in his own before the man left with a bow.

With Hippo still not back he was alone with the sleeping Melos, and he trudged back up the short flight of stairs to slouch against the foot of the bed. His breathing was a little more deep and even than it had been before, and he let it ease the last of his worries as he drifted into unconsciousness.

He's back on the cross, his shoulders searing at their twisted position and chest heaving for air. The sun has set, the only light in the empty courtyard one single ray that highlights the proud body of Melos. He's leaning back, the light highlighting every ridge of muscle and every long strand of hair that billows around him as he pulls the sword down, straight through his chest into his heart. He knows that he's screaming, cursing him for being late but he can't hear anything as Melos staggers then his knees buckle and he drops to the ground, blood pooling and spreading until it fills the yard. Still he hangs on his cross, muscles burning and tearing as he watches his friend rot before him, sloughing into pieces while he slowly suffocates over hours that are days.

Now he's in the courtyard, staring up at the silhouette of a cross against a deep red sky. His arms are raised above his head, the smooth wood of a hilt held firmly in his hands and he's watching the outlined Melos struggling to breathe, body twisting to lift him higher and then falling back down, too weak to continue. The tip of the sword doesn't hurt as it pierces and slides into him in one fluid strike, body softer than soapstone, until his hand touches his breastbone and he's silently shouting at the shadow before him that he should have stayed away, taken his chance and run.

Back on the cross, he’s gasping and coughing and looking out over the courtyard that stretches to the horizon, and there's nobody there; Melos never came, and he's screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I may have gone a bit too far in a few places wrt the Greek setting
> 
> A kylix is that shallow two handed bowlcup  
> Wine was traditionally diluted, and being drunk was a big nono  
> Celery was anti-inflammatory (and I think either it or "celerytown", Selinunte in Sicily named Seline)  
> Greek medicine was mostly praying and bleeding, but they did also try methods that worked


	2. Chapter 2

He jolted awake, panting and sweat damp, blinking against the last images of the nightmare. He dropped his head to his hands as he waited for his heart to settle, the phantom ache still in his lungs. It was only a dream, and the fact that he was in the bed, blankets tangled from his dream surely meant that its previous inhabitant was up and walking and they hadn't carried his dead body over his sleeping head and put him on the cold bier. The room was washed in orange as the first tinges of sunset crept in; a whole day for Melos to recover.

The smell of food came to him slowly as he pulled a spare himation around himself, dragging him out of the bedroom across the corridor in a trance; even as a famous prisoner there was little reason to feed him before his crucifixion. It was wafting over from a small pot seated happily in the fire that bubbled in front of the huddled forms of Hippo and Melos. His broad back was to the door as he hunched over a bowl, spoon working madly, Hippo watching him eat with a wide grin. He spotted Selinuntius first, and his greeting pulled Melos round to face him, soup running from his chin and almost dropped the bowl as he rose to meet him in the door. 

"Seline! Mornin'!" he barked, happy and light with no indication that he'd been tossing in a fever through the night other than a slight pallor as he crushed him to his chest. One of his own old woolen tunics had been pulled out of a chest somewhere and it was stretched thin over muscle, bulging at his loincloth and thighs and looking close to tearing when his arm stretched out in greeting. It was ridiculous on him, a step back from obscene and he giddily resolved to take him out to the market the next day and keep him from the swindlers.

His fist came down to thump Selinuntius on the back as they settled back down, the last dregs flying from the spoon to land against his bare shoulder.

"How are you doing?" he asked, unsure of how he had managed to end up in the bed but willing to bet that Melos had risked his stitches to haul him in. 

"I'm fine, " Melos said, the fist that still held his spoon brushing his nose. "I'm hardly up myself, but Hippo's filled me in on the doctor's visit. Thanks for sending for him".

Selinuntius studied him; the wine-dark bruises standing out viciously next to the bright white wool, scabbed over grazes across his face and eye swollen shut. His smile huge and bright, back straight and movements confident, hair unbound to sit loose about his shoulders in a long, jet hood that absorbed the light from the rest of the room. 

"You look better," he decided. "At least, you couldn't really look worse than you did last night."

Melos smiled sheepishly and held a still-warm egg out to him that he took gratefully, cracking it on the leg of the stool while Hippo searched about the mess of his house for a usable bowl. 

"When was the last time you had a meal?" he asked Melos, who dropped the spoon back in the bowl with a soft clink as he considered it.

"There was a chicken leg on the last stretch to Syracuse and... bread and wine at Itake, I guess. There wasn't really time."

Melos laughed, a small and incredulous sound, and raised his spoon to watch the broth pour from it in a gurgling thyme-scented stream. It was an insane prospect to have run across the island on an empty stomach, and Selinuntius had half a mind to pour the rest of the pot down his throat.

Hippo returned with a moderately chipped bowl, the plain glaze faded but intact, filled it with more of the thick and steaming soup into it held it out to him. He took it with thanks, breathing deep and started in earnest. It was delicious, a thick layer of turnip and carrot sediment at the bottom of the bowl, and the days of nothing but bread and water cast aside in a moment. 

"You too, Hippo," he said. The boy nodded and pulled the pair of his own bowl from the shelf he'd just tidied it to. 

They ate in silence, too intent on the food and living in the small touch of home it afforded them, Hippo looking between the two of them as they stared into the fire, sneaking glances. 

Melos went back for seconds and then thirds before Selinuntius spooned the last from the pot, drinking it down in one long gulp to savour the salt tang at the back of his throat. He set his bowl down with a contented sigh and reached over to drag a small pouch of beechnuts from one of the low shelves and set it on the floor between them as Hippo retrieved their bowls to clean them. The first one split cleanly under his thumbs as Melos set his own bowl aside and turned to him, his elbows on his knees in easy relaxation. 

A memory came to him of the last time he'd been unwinding here with someone else, and he turned to Hippo.

"Has Raisa come past?"

"No, she hasn't. Not her or Calippus."

It was Melos who answered, which he hadn't expected. 

"Why would they be together?" he asked, combing his memories for any lost memory of their being friends.

"They were helping me get back to Syracuse." Melos quieted, his gaze falling to the slowly growing pile of beechnut shells on the floor between them. "I would never have made it without them; they saved me. Twice."

The words slip in his grasp; he had never been good enough to Raisa to deserve that gesture, and Calippus had no reason to risk so much on a lark.

His eye was drawn to light that flickered by Melos's chest. The necklace that had swung forward with him and now hung before his tunic was Raisa's, and no common favour; something more had happened between them on the road and it sat uneasily with him.

"They'll come back," he said, the confidence easy but his concerns running deep. "Syracuse is Raisa's home after all, and Calippus is always off on jaunts."

"I could check in on some of his regular places?" Hippo piped up from the basin, and Selinuntius nodded to him. 

"Thank you."

The boy was lost to the deep red of the city in moments.

It only took a short rifling through abandoned property to find the better wine, and he brought it back with two kylices carefully hooked on his other hand. Melos took his with a grateful smile as Selinuntius dropped himself back down. 

"Are you going to tell me what happened on your run, then?"

The sun set and the room darkened around them as Melos told his story, each detail more incredible and severe than the last. It should have been the sort of tale that would be laughed out, but it was told with such open honesty that there was no doubt in him, and the evidence too stark on his body. He watched the firelight play over each of the dark cuts and bruises as their origins were told, remembered the feeling of wounds pulling closed as he learned of the brutish swords that had caused them. It was enough to make him guilty for his time as hostage; all that time, his mind at ease and the stone shaping smoothly by his attention while Melos was fighting assassins, climbing mountains and drowning in swollen rivers.

His storyteller took no joy in the telling. He started with how buying the sword was the only way he could be a good brother, at the slow search through Catania and Hephaestus's nearest forges never quite finding the right one - too Athenian for Clea's tastes, although Selinuntius privately wondered if she would have even noticed the style in the middle of the celebrations. Melos hunched into himself as he skipped over the ignominy of his arrest and their shared experience in the dungeon, but brightened a little as he recounted the buzz of happiness at his sister's wedding and the pride he'd felt as he handed her over. All that dulled slowly over the long list of assaults and set backs, to recover only when Raisa and Calippus appeared to save him at two miraculous moments of despair and the strange character of Alexis that neither of them could pin down. By the time he was on more familiar ground, weaving up through the desolate streets of Syracuse, Melos was subdued and listlessly flicking at an empty nutshell with his thumbs. 

"It's strange to list it all out like this," he said as it dropped to the floor by the others.

"It's a hell of a list," he replied, refilling Melos's kylix with the last of the wine.

"It's not that."

It was so sincere that it shut down any response.

"I'd never really thought about death, between the flock and village I was always trying just to keep up and not make a fool of myself, then out of nowhere I'm condemned and dying of drought in the middle of the road, thinking of nothing of it for days on end. And now I'm in your house drinking wine and listening to the nightjars like I would've been back home."

"Except now everything hurts," he offered.

Melos smiled sadly and drank.

"That's true, except even home will be different now that Clea's married." 

From the desperation that tore him up outside the cells, the love it reflected had to be blinding.

"We've only had each other for so long that we almost became each other's parents. She's got her head on more than me, and's seen well enough by the rest of the village that they'll listen to her when she stands up for me. I don't know what I give her back, so I'm definitely getting the better deal there."

He smiled mockingly at the statement, and resentment flared in Selinuntius.

"Why do you say that?"

"It's true," Melos shrugged as he set down his empty kylix. "I've always been clumsy and slow; she's better than me."

"Say that to the courtyard full of people who were cheering for you yesterday, or everyone who spoke to you last night."

He was bristling, and as Melos slumped away from him he tried to stop himself but the words kept coming.

"You're someone who I trusted after I met you once, and you proved it well founded, more than I could have ever expected from someone."

Melos broke with a sharp gasp, burying his head in his hands and hair drawing a black curtain around him.

"I broke my promise to you, after you gave so much for a mess like me." His voice was strained to almost crack, the muscles of his shoulders tight enough to snap.

"I didn't make any deal I didn't want to. You were trying, even with the world turning against you; what more could you have done?"

Melos's face emerged from his hair, eyes wet.

"I could have been quicker to leave before the bridge fell, woken up sooner after I fell, taken a better route! It must have hurt you when I didn't turn up that night."

He couldn't deny it, and the admission stung more with the knowledge of how far Melos had pushed himself, a fact he had known only in the abstract but now had meticulously mapped over broken skin.

"That was my own weakness, and nothing of yours," he said, not bearing to say it aloud. "I should have kept faith."

"But you did," Melos said, reaching to Selinuntius's hands in his own calloused ones. "You told me to keep running."

The clean trust sank its claws into his chest and he lurched off his stool to press a kiss to Melos's lips, where it met a low sound of surprise. He ran his fingers down thin strands of hair to the back of his neck, pulling him closer to taste the tannin from his mouth for one held breath until they pulled apart, foreheads close.

"Can you handle more?" Selinuntius asked, gaze flicking to purple shoulders and white bandages.

Melos looked up, half dazed in the firelight, and nodded. 

"What about Hippo? If he comes back..."

"He won't look for us if we aren't here or in the living room. He's a smart kid," Selinuntius said as he offered a hand to help Melos to his feet with a huge, unsteady step.

Melos's joints were smoother once he was up and moving, and the heavy length of Selinuntius's himation had barely slipped from his shoulder to the floor of the dim bedroom before the battered body was moving fluidly to press him down to the bed as it had the night before.

"Do you think that's wise?" he asked as he was pushed down, the huge silhouette caging him in with sweet kisses.

"It won't kill me."

The image of slick red blood between his fingers drove him up to apply his strength on a thick shoulder, wrestling until he sat above him with his knees spread across his chest. Melos tried to grapple at him; unwieldy rough-housing moves that he dove through to slide forearm to throat with just enough pressure to hold him still.

"Behave, would you?" he asked, a laugh deep in his chest as something liquid stirred deeper still. 

Melos was quiet and completely still. What little light came through the clouds shone on eyes wide with intensity rather than panic, and Selinuntius felt a strange power in his blood.

He found himself thinking of all that he'd been told of the run, and the dream-memory of suicide. Ever since he had heard the terms of the bargain he had known that he would keep his promise; that Melos would return and be executed while he looked on, and then he would be left alone again without anyone to have faith in. To sweeten the deal, if the world failed him and his trust was broken once more he would be dead and no longer suffering from the void in his soul. Everything in those long days had been flavoured through with death; his own, his father's, his friend's.

And after all that Melos had suffered, had he proven himself worthy of that same trust? He had undergone none of the same tests, and his gambit was one of elaborate self destruction as much as it was loyalty.

He shifted more of his weight to feel the quick beat of blood against his skin as he leant down to peer down at the open face below him. 

"Do you trust me?" he asked. Large hands reached up to his waist, dry and cracked thumbs brushing against him in little waves.

"Seline," was all Melos whispered out as he released him long enough to get his hands circling the thick column, his eyes steady and firm and mouth open in faint wonder.

It was a relief to have that pulse beat firm against his his palms; a life in his hands to control rather than his own dependent upon another. Here they were in full knowledge of their positions rather than blundering through responsibility half guessed and unaccepted, and knew everything was fine. He would release the pressure and Melos would be free - Melos who was breathing shallowly against the taut pressure of his fingers, body tight and pulling Selinuntius closer against him with that strong grip. He felt the cock underneath him begin to harden, pressing up through too many layers of cloth.

He leant down to kiss him, sweet and deep against chapped lips as he took his shaking hands away to pull at his loincloth so it hung flowing from his waist with his ass uncovered and push Melos's to the side just enough to pull the hot weight of his dick loose. It felt delicious; not as long as his own but wide and wickedly curved. He gave it a few long, leisurely strokes, pausing to brush his thumb down the foreskin, and he revelled in the undulation of Melos's body below him as he squirmed.

"You'll make a great model for my next work. Have you ever worn a kynodesme?"

"Seline, please."

"I don't see what you're so embarrassed about. Might have to scale you down a bit though." 

He grinned at his scandalised face, cutting off the chances of reprisal by sliding back up to straddle his waist so that the half-hard shaft nestled between the cheeks of his ass, warm and smooth and promising. 

His hands found their way back to that bull neck, thumbs slipping into the dip above his collarbone to push lightly against the rolling tendons, mindful of his strength. He kept his mouth close to catch the sighs that left Melos as he rocked his balls slowly along his abdomen, pushing back into the dick that swelled against him. The pulse drummed faster against his fingertips, driving his own blood south, and where in this mess had he left the oils? Melos was heating rapidly, holding tight on his knees, his chest arched up and a glazed look to the grin that split his face.

Maybe it was the same for him too, and he was revelling in the chance to passive and trusting where he hadn't been able before. The thought ate at him and fed his need as he took himself in hand and stroked himself roughly, Melos tracking the movement hungrily.

"That's really-" he croaked out with a hard grinding thrust against his ass, but Selinuntius never found out what it had been. The words were swallowed half grown as Melos crumpled in pain below him, the pleasured breaths turning to strained groans as an instant. He scrambled off and knelt by the bed, looking over him in renewed concern.

"Sorry," Melos ground out through visible hurt, "I might have overdone it, pulled a muscle."

Selinuntius slumped against the bed frame with a disbelieving laugh.

"Let's leave that until you're better, the last thing I need is to finish the job."

Melos chuckled, hand still pressed to a bruise stretched across his stomach that had purpled so dark as to be black. 

"Do you think you'll be alright?"

"Yeah," he breathed, settling a little into the bed. "I'll be fine to continue in a minute, but I don't think I can push myself."

"You've done enough pushing yourself already," he laughed.

He watched quietly as his breathing calmed and his muscles relaxed again, and in time Melos was untying his loincloth and he followed suit, staring each other down as the lust heated between them again.

He leant over for a kiss, trailing a hand down his neck to lay against the thudding pulse, keeping it there as the other travelled down the length of his body. He ghosted light breaths over heated skin, swinging onto the scratching hides to place himself in between spread knees with his mouth hovering just above a cock that was rapidly filling again; the musk of it filled his nose. 

"Tell me if you need to stop." 

He watched the thick swallow, felt the constriction of throat against his fingertips, and dipped his head to the heavy velvet flesh. The foreskin retracted under his lips, the first taste of salt spreading across his tongue and he lapped at it, the tremors of response enough that he braced his free hand on Melos's thigh to hold him still. 

Still kissing the head he pressed his fingers deeper into the muscle of Melos's neck, relishing the fast beat of his heart and the desperate stare as Selinuntius finally licked a long bitter trail down the underside of his cock, tracing a vein to his balls before sliding back up and taking him in his mouth. His jaw worked at the stretch, glans scraping across his palate as he pushed himself down the curve. Melos had his hands tugging gingerly at his curls in flutters of movement, too light to direct him. 

Selinuntius swallowed hard, his tongue pressed firmly against the shaft as he pulled himself back up, hollowing his cheeks and watching Melos's mouth drop open and shoulders slacken. It was an addictive sight, but he would need to be quicker than this if he was to avoid injuring him again. He lifted clear, his mouth leaving loud liquid noises in the air and he spat into his hand, quickly rubbing the saliva between his fingers before he reapplied himself with little kisses and humming sucks. He rubbed a finger against the tight ring of his asshole and tenderly worked his way in, taking his own cock in his other hand and giving it a few quick strokes to take the edge from his need.

Melos was responding loudly, each thrust of his finger into the squeezing heat meeting an answering moan from low in his heaving chest, and every time he swallowed down the suffocating length his hair was pulled by directionless twitches. The muscled legs on either side of him shivered as he curled his fingers and dragged it back, the bandage scraping against his cheek. 

The only warning he had before hot come hit the back of his throat was his hair being yanked painfully, swiftly followed by powerful thighs clamped down around him firm and fast enough to make his head spin. 

They retracted immediately, a panicked sorry coming down to him through the ringing in his ears as he sat back up to rub at his cheek and take the opportunity to ease the ache in his jaw.

"It's fine," he said, the world coming back to him.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Melos asked shakily, almost pleading, and the rubbing at his jaw turned more contemplative. Leaving him to get the oil was impossible when he was so hard, Melos's willing body was flush against his own and deep brown eyes were blearily looking up at him with a sweet smile. His chest ached with it, and he gave.

"Lift up your legs for me?" 

Melos flinched slightly as he raised his knees, gripping at the bruise and Selinuntius feared the worse but after a few moments he was peaceful again. His calves were too big to rest both on one shoulder so they straddled his neck as a comfortable weight and with the rough linen bandage scratching his stomach as he moved. 

Spitting again into his hand, he smeared it over his full cock and eased it between warm and sweat-damp legs that closed snug about him. He thrust forward, the skin of his shaft dragging slightly and the burn of it only egged him on faster, fingers sinking into the meat of thighs that he clutched tightly to his chest as he fucked into them again and again. The tip of his dick brushed up along the suffocating heat of Melos's perineum to sink into the give of his balls to linger there for a rabbit-quick beat and then back again. Melos arched his back to give him a better angle, fists digging into the bed to temper the rocking of their bodies as he fucked himself closer and closer to completion. 

The proximity was maddening; the odd slip when his cock would catch on the ridge of Melos's asshole and the tiny motions of hips underneath him were full of promise, as was the eager, lax face below him, and his rhythm stammered. The orgasm hit him with force, driving him against warm thighs where he held tight while he trembled through the aftershocks, leaving them sticky when he finally drew out and let them relax.

He slumped down with loose limbs to lick up his spattered spend, deep satisfaction spreading through him as the taste of his own come mixing with the aftertaste from Melos.

"You don't need to do that," Melos said from far away, and he crawled bonelessly up his body to kiss him quiet, a slow press that the afterglow softened into deep licks and long panting sigh as they both cooled. 

He laid a hand on the bandage over Melos's heart, gratitude and hope welling in his chest with such intensity it burned; emotions he'd almost given up on.

The idiotic smile that cracked his face was a mirror of the one beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The battle of common sense against horniness continues to be fought and lost.
> 
> Himation is the name for that toga thing Selinuntius wears  
> A kynodesme is essentially a ribbon for your foreskin to hide the head of your dick and show off your balls. Greece.


	3. Chapter 3

It was strange in Syracuse after Melos had left. They'd set off with their marble Raisa as soon as he was healed enough to make the journey, the stitches marked by pinprick scabs and a dark but cleanly healing line. 

The statue had been relaxing to carve; the familiar features of Raisa had come so willingly to his hands and his new peace brought new light and feeling to his previous muse. He'd lost the overhanging cloud of uncertainty that had followed him since the quarry, as well as the itch of displacement that had troubled him forever and only grown worse since he'd hit puberty. He was rusty after three years more of the hammer than the chisel, but the finer movements returned quickly, Melos sitting beside him and Hippo fussing around the yard. Their physical contact had been limited to quick touches and wet mouths, his recovery still prominent in their minds so that those scant moments were enough. It was a comfortable intimacy that he'd forgotten was possible.

They'd parted happily, the air cleared from the weight of their fists and the promise of a brighter future before them, even if he'd kept the details of his confession to himself. For another day, perhaps. It was liberating to have that trust still; Melos had accepted his request and explanation without question, and turned his own cheek for the most human of failings that he had so completely overcome. 

That comfort remained after Melos had gone back to Itake. It was muted, the yard larger without the now-familiar figure describing his favourite spots on the high scrub land he grazed the sheep on or pulling innocent anecdotes from him about the happier times of his life in the city. The secluded life that he had wasted drinking among the shattered work of his youth was unbalanced in a subtle way that he would have to find his feet in over time.

Pistia stood careful guard outside his gate. Her sudden appearance was the only clue that he had begun work again, and yet word had spread throughout the city; he'd already accepted several commissions and declined or postponed many others. His reputation for skill was his inheritance, as tainted and bloodied as it was, and it would help nothing to give them work born of him rediscovering the minutiae of the work.

Several weeks after he returned from the Messina road there was a familiar holler from outside the gate, and he barely had time to brush his hands clean on his apron before Calippus was clapping him on the back enthusiastically.

"Good to see you!" the old man grinned, looking the same as he ever did.

Selinuntius returned the slap on the shoulder, his own smile a pair.

"There you are, ruffian. Where've you been off to?"

"Here and there, you know how it is. Fishing for shepherds, some light cart racing," Calippus said, creaking an eyebrow up as he swaggered over to perch on one of the high blocks.

"So I heard," he replied, making himself comfortable on a low slab. "You and Raisa make an unusual team to say the least."

"What can I say? She's very convincing, and it sounded like a good way to jam a stick up Dionysius' plans."

"Was that enough?" 

"Very convincing," Calippus repeated, crossing his arms and nodding sagely. "Plus," he winked, "it's a good story, gets me a lot of free drinks."

Selinuntius sighed fondly.

"Fair enough. Did Raisa come back with you?"

Calippus sagged for a moment.

"She'll be back once she hears the news, I'll bet, but I think she needed some time alone. Didn't know which one of you had made it and didn't care to find out."

"I can understand that, and thanks for looking out for her. And me."

He couldn't bring himself to include Melos; he wasn't sure delivering him to his own execution classified as concern. 

Calippus waved him off in a gesture too slight for the gravity of his actions, and they whiled the rest of the day away in friendly conversation and too much wine. Eventually Calippus faded back into the crowd and he was left in the dust and quiet, staring at the shadows his half-formed art cast. 

Another part of that old life chipped away.

This changing of the guard worried at him, and he resolved to make the trip to Messina, to make a clean break. Better now than wait until winter and worse road, and he'd been hankering to see this sister that had almost got one or both of them killed. 

He was ready within a few days.

Hippo was armed with enough stories of scouting foreign marble quarries to ward off any enquiries from the people who were promised work and his pack was light, crammed into the back of his cart and dwarfed by the delicate figure that lay alongside it, made huge by its blanket swaddling. 

It was a small idol for a family shrine, depicting Hermes in his role as messenger of the gods in mid-stride. Not his best work, but perhaps his favourite. Calippus had made a loud comment about his finding a new muse when he'd found it tucked amongst the other finished works and he had laughed along with him, the resemblance too close to be anything other than obvious. Before he'd known it the entire yard had that same face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DID YOU KNOW that marble sculpting on Sicily was rare because it had to be imported at great cost? Most of the carving there was in limestone.
> 
> You didn't, because this knowledge is useless to everyone.


	4. Chapter 4

Itake was smaller than he had imagined, the little hamlet grown to a metropolitan size in his mind thanks to the many stories of it he'd heard and its common appearance in his thoughts during the long hours of quiet. 

The road had treated him well, and he had spent the journey comfortably observing the sites that he'd heard about in such vivid detail that now lay bare, safe and inviting to an anonymous traveller. It had only spurned him on faster, the struggles and pain that Melos had suffered becoming real again in his mind as every landmark passed him by and the memory of the man looming larger among them. As such, when he pulled up to a village of only a few dozen dwellings and hall it felt like a wrong turn. The land was beautiful, certainly; the sprawling olive and cypress woodlands sloping gently towards brush land dotted with distant sheep with the sapphire streak of the sea glistening in the distance, but the name of Itake had taken on such life he had half expected pristine townhouses and bustling streets, no matter how implausible he had known it to be. 

A local shouted across the main courtyard to ask his business, and when he called Melos's name back to him several heads turned in his direction. Soon he was the centre of a small crowd asking if he was this master carver they'd heard so much about and how long he'd be staying, and could they take his cart round to the right yard for him. He stepped down, stretching out the creaks and aches from the long hours of driving and hands immediately clapped him on the back with hearty laughs and a conspicuous lack of Melos. 

He was pulled into a handshake by one of the older villagers, with crooked hands and glowing eyes.

"He said he was off on a long journey, never to return, would you believe that? And then he'd said he'd been robbed of his travel money when he came back in the same month. We had to find out from the market! He may be a liar now but at least he's a responsible one!"

It twisted his guts to hear it so innocently put; a desperate effort to keep them out of the worst even if it reflected poorly on him.

"Good to see you exist," one of the voices behind him said. "You're living proof that even our fuck-up cousin can come good once in a while!"

He bristled and turned towards the speaker, harsh words cramming unbidden to his tongue, but before he could get the first one out there was a slap across his face. He staggered in place, cheek burning, and looked to the slim woman in shock. She still had her hand raised, which then swept down and he was bundled into a hug before he could even begin to react. 

"Clea!" admonished the weedy man who appeared at her shoulder, and another part of the legend flickered into life. She released him only to take a step back and glower with fire in her eyes and fists at her hips.

"He told me everything, you know. If it hadn't been for you he would never have wandered into the palace and gotten himself arrested in the first place." He blinked at the new information, biting his tongue. 

"I appreciate what you did for him, so you're forgiven," she continued, softening only around the edges, "but don't think I didn't see that wound on his leg, or him fishing scraps of his clothes from his pack. You'd better not be about to drag him into another wild and misguided-"

She was cut off by a hand that pressed softly to her shoulder, and the weedy man who must be the similarly mythic husband stepped up next to her.

"Your sacrifice was the reason we're married now rather than mourning a traitor in secret, so thank you," he said - the last few words mumbled so low that he almost couldn't make them out. 

A gormless smile was the best he could do at first, but he forced himself to reply.

"It seems he has a good family here." He meant it with everything he had, between the lioness and her mousy partner.

"He's made a name for the whole village," Clea said, puffing up with pride.

"I kept making jokes about him falling asleep in the wedding ceremony," grumbled the man who'd just returned from leading his cart to Melos's yard. "Had to give him a whole amphora when I found out."

They were interrupted by a great yell and then Melos was there; sweating, panting and brushing his way through the little throng with his crook still gripped tight.

Everything else didn't matter; not the ire of the villagers, the strange accusation from Clea, fatigue from the road or the clinging half-familiarity of the landscape. He crushed them together in an embrace, deaf and blind to the world as he focused on the warm chest pressed against his cheek and arms tight against his back; the funk of sweat and musk of lanolin from him overpowering and perfect.

"You're here!" Melos said at last, pushing him away to get a better look at him, his face full of Selinuntius's own happiness. 

"I'm here!" he replied, and they were laughing. A wild urge to kiss him rose in Selinuntius's chest and he forced it back down, content in the moment to watch the way the wide smile creased skin and crinkled eyes as he was introduced to Clea, and Agathon, her husband, the one he'd spoken about, and they could go and meet the village chief if he wanted but where was his cart?

"Later, later," he said, waving him off. "It's been a long two days and the thing I really need to do now is sit in one your famous views and go to sleep."

Melos laughed again and then he was herded out of the crowd that hooted after him and they were hiking up, out of Itake itself into the hills as they compared notes on how their lives had changed in small waves, and Melos showed off the long scars that Selinuntius's stitches had left. The sun was still bright and streamed through the loose foliage until they were in the plains, open and rolling down to the sea. It was warm and quiet, and he settled himself below a sprawling chestnut tree with relief so complete it left him feeble. Melos slumped his way down the trunk next to him, legs sprawled haphazardly.

It was so vibrant and utterly different from the city he'd spent his whole life in that he marvelled at it, and Melos inhabited the wilderness with ease; every part the pastoral ingenu.

"Why were you arrested in the first place?" he asked, breaking the calm silence. He hadn't meant to, but the question had burned in him all the way up the path. It had never been important before, when all he'd needed to know was that Melos needed his help. "You're no assassin. Dionysius hardly needs a reason for assassination these days, but why you?"

Melos sighed and slouched further down, then fished in his bag for bread that he broke in half for them.

"I didn't mean to be. It was sad, all of those smashed up statues of yours, and I was told that the palace was the place to see the finished ones. The fountain especially - it's beautiful, it really is - but I'd bought a sharpened sword instead of a ceremonial one, since Clea is so taken with Syracuse and they said it was the fashion there, and when they caught me I can't blame them for taking it like they did."

It was such an innocent and well-meant reason that it explained everything completely, and the guilty weight slipped from his shoulders.

"You should probably be told that the fashion is still ceremonial swords in Syracuse."

"I knew it," Melos snipped, staring angrily at the bread in his fist before softening again. "Anyway, by the time I got back it didn't matter so much - I wasn't running to be executed for treason, I was running to stop you from being executed. That's pretty stupid of me, isn't it?"

"You'd have saved me just by coming back, even if you hadn't made it on time."

Melos shuffled round, peering as though he would be able to figure him out through observation. 

"You said something like that that before."

"Mmm, I did," he hummed, watching a sail struggle along the horizon. "I'd been living a crap life and making crap art because I didn't believe in anything, and then you gave me yourself to believe in. It was a foundation, of sorts. It's a long story."

"No deadline this time, other than the trip back down being a pain in the dark."

Selinuntius laughed, the words he wanted slowly congealing but the size of it immense; it was so much easier to confess in the heat of the moment.

"Calippus said he'd told you what he knew?"

Melos made an affirmative sort of grunt, hunching into himself in his periphery.

"It's fine, but there's... a lot more. 

He let out a sigh.

"When my mother died I was left in a country where they spoke my second language and with no other Etruscans around, so I was completely isolated. The man I came to see as my father took me in when I was a nobody facing life on the streets, and he taught me everything he knew. I wasn't legally adopted since the laws were being changed into at the time but for all intents and purposes I was his son, and there was talk that when I got to be old enough it would be formalised into his becoming my erastes. It was supposed to be only in the eyes of the law and I would continue to be his son rather than eromenos, but it didn't work out like that. 

"I picked up the craft quickly, and he'd show off the things I'd made when I was young, and he would be so happy when I'd finish something, but I found out later that he had begun to see me as a threat about the time I hit puberty. He'd called me Selinuntius for the first few years we lived together, but as I grew older he started calling me Seline like the others did; he said that it suited someone as pretty as me more. I couldn't stand it, I wanted to be strong like he was, so he could see his hard work reflected in me."

"Do you still not like being called Seline?" Melos asked quietly, and the tension in his voice brought a smile to Selinuntius's face.

"No, it's okay, you can keep on calling me that. It's been so long that I don't register it any more, and it would take a lot of wine to mistake me for a girl these days. I guess I did turn out looking more like him than my mother in the end."

His boat on the horizon turned slowly to slide towards him on the solid plane of the sea.

"I eventually saw it as a harmless nickname anyway, a sign that I was one of the family. I wasn't though, and he first lay with me when I was only then beginning to grow into a man. It was the night after the first time someone told me they preferred my work to his own."

He shivered in the heat at the memory of strong fingers holding him down against crudely hewn stone - hands with the same calluses and scars as he had chiseled and polished into himself out of love - of pain and confusion and the deep, dark hope that his father would be proud of him for bearing it without complaint.

"He was my father, whether he saw it or not, and I still trusted him even after that." The words tore at him but he had to say it now or he never would. "I couldn't make myself think of him as my erastes, but he didn't see himself as my father. It pushed us apart, but I still loved him.

The little white dot and its tiny boat were tacking through rough winds, straining at their limits. He looked away.

"When Dionysius sent that appointment it all stopped. I wasn't an eromenos any more, I was my own man with my own trade at the age of fifteen when most boys were just being taken under a wing. I thought that was what we both wanted, and that since I'd proven myself everything would go back to normal, but I couldn't have been more wrong. He still spoke to me warmly but there was no speaking of art or family, or the king, and everything had a tension running underneath it that I managed to convince myself was imagined."

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back to hit the rough bark, the pain a steadying and stable presence.

"And then there was the collapse at the quarry. It was just after I'd settled into the new role but there were still people who were angry at the position I'd secured at such a young age and cried foul, so there was no end of anonymous people to suspect. It was worse than the broken legs; I'd go outside and every face on the street would be an attacker, someone out to hurt or kill me, what, because I was good with a chisel? For a job I had no part in picking for myself? He was the only person I could trust, my own father! And I was stuck in that house with him for weeks, watching me with something I thought was concern but was probably guilt. I hope it was guilt, anyway. He was kind, he'd sit with me as I cried and cried and carved nothing, and it seemed like we were getting closer again. It was him who convinced me that whoever it was wouldn't try again and that it would be safe to go out again."

He sighed into the still air, the ugly emotions made strong by years of distillation churning in his chest and drowning him. A tear slid down his cheek but there was no energy in him to wipe it away.

"I had no idea until he told me on his deathbed, years later. He talked and laughed and ate with me in the meantime, helping me learn to walk without the stick and learn to talk to people I would never fully trust, knowing the whole time that he'd done it to me. Then he was gone and I was left alone to deal with everything he'd told me. He was the last person I could trust and after that there was nothing I could believe in with any certainty, except that even the people you love the most can stab you in the back. The worst part was understanding why he'd done it, that sculpting was always the more important part of his life and nothing I could have done would have ever displaced it. I'm not sure I would have wanted to replace it, but I certainly didn't want to take it away from him."

"Is that why you destroyed them all?" Melos asked. His voice was small, timid, and wrong. 

"I tried to make things, again and again, but I was hollowed out. There was nothing that I wanted to make, and anything I forced myself to start came out as rotten as I felt. I was made up of nothing but contempt for the role and everything that working under it meant, everything that my talent had done to myself and what I'd thought my family; it ruined my father and turned him against me, and then exposed him and the whole twisted relationship we had. Everything I'd learned from him was tainted since I'd used it to usurp him, and so that brought guilt as well. I hated myself for pushing him to it, and for still loving him just as much as I hated him for not telling me. He'd sat in that house as I cried, then held up a leg that he'd broken himself so that he could get deeper in me," he spat, feeling the poison leave his body with the confession. He slumped further, wishing desperately to be horribly drunk.

"Then, when I couldn't create any more I would sit in the workshop, staring at all the half finished ones that sat like accusations of my impotence. So I took a hammer to them. They were a lot easier to look at when they were all broken up."

"And I saved you from that?" 

Melos was leaning forward, the disbelief as strong in his face as the grief. He smiled. 

"Yeah, you did, although it was only half because I believed you."

He expected him to be upset, but instead Melos kept his gaze steady and intent, waiting for the explanation, and he relaxed a little. 

"I volunteered to take your place because you seemed to be telling the truth, but also to bet on trust. If the gamble paid off and you came back it would have proven that people could be trusted, even in the worst circumstances, and if I couldn't trust you I'd be dead. It was a certainty I'd been looking for all that time, a black and white choice that let me breathe again and properly pick up my chisel for the first time since he'd died. Then you came back and showed me it wasn't all for nothing, and that I could believe others to not betray me."

"You still want to carve?"

It was a blunt question, and one that he'd asked himself enough that the answer came smoothly to his lips.

"Yeah, I want to. I'm good at it, it helps me express what I wouldn't be able to otherwise and it passes on the skills he'd taken so much pride in. It honours him. Even after distance has shown me how messed up we became he was still my father. I thought that I'd wanted him to appreciate my skill and how well he'd taught me, but really I needed the bond of family I can barely remember having with my mother."

Melos frowned at the ground.

"What's your relationship with Hippo?"

He barked a laugh, the spite that rose up in him unexpected and cold.

"It would be a shitty family who gave me their kid! Seline, the town drunk who hasn't made anything in years. No, he's a born slave I bought back when I still had some of the money I made as Master. He was too young to be of any practical use to anyone and so I brought him in to be safe from any of the lechers at the market, give him a better start the way my father had given to me; if he hadn't taken me in I would have been up in the same market, and from the attention I'd gathered as 'Seline' it wouldn't have been pretty."

"So, you don't..." Melos tried, the colour blooming high on his cheeks. 

"No."

The huge frame sagged in relief, and he brushed his nose with his knuckles to poorly hide his smile. 

"What if I hadn't made it back?"

"He would have been adopted as my heir and been free."

Melos stared at him, shock slackening his jaw.

"You really are a good guy, aren't you?"

Selinuntius smiled wryly and gave him a weak punch to the arm.

"All this time and you've only just noticed?"

Immediately a hand was in his hair, big fingers brusquely ruffling through his curls, but before he could reach up to detach them they hooked into his tainia and the ribbon was pulled clean away. The reach to snatch it back brought him forward on one palm with the other outstretched, but Melos saw him coming and ducked in close to kiss him hard, his thumb brushing over his cheek to pull away the lingering trace of a tear. Melos blushed and pushed himself back on his feet, brushing the detritus from his legs and looking towards the village path.

"It's getting dark, we should head back."

Selinuntius blinked, the soft grey wash of dusk suddenly obvious, and he followed him slowly to his feet, his cart-stiff muscles screaming in protest. The soft brush of ribbon on his cheek brought his hand slapping onto his head where the tainia had been deposited and he tugged it back into place with his best attempt at a scornful stare. 

The walk back seemed shorter and his steps lighter than they had been on the way up, and in no time they were winding their way back through the village when a shout came across the street to them. Clea was waving them across with her sullen husband at her shoulder, and she hustled them inside against all their protests.

Dinner was already laid out in little bowls and steaming pots, and rumbled along in a vaguely awkward but warm atmosphere.

Agathon said very little and kept sneaking unhappy glances at his wife as she variously puffed with pride and bristled in concern for her brother, who spent most of his time smiling sheepishly as Selinuntius looked on in bemusement. After they were done and Clea had tidied the earthenware Agathon abruptly stood and proclaimed that they had been very pleasant, thank you, and good night. 

The night air was freezing cold after spending so long in the warmth of home and hearth.

"Your sister is a real character. She must have loved you turning up out of the blue and announcing her wedding."

Melos chuckled nervously and absently reached for the back of his head to trail the dark hair through his fist.

"Something like that. She gave me an extra earful when the news of my being sentenced to death and then pardoned beat me home."

Selinuntius laughed as the image vividly presented itself, just as his heart stung at the thought of a lioness sister willing to lose her temper with him out of care.

A familiar cart came into view, neatly stowed alongside one of the little houses and his faithful horse tethered nearby. He made his way over to pull his pack from it, Melos peering over the side next to him. 

"What's the bundle?"

"See for yourself, we can unwrap it inside" he replied, jumping up into the cart to hand it out to him. It was more awkward than it was heavy, and for one treacherous moment it wobbled between them before it was safely held close again.

Melos had already backed his way inside by the time he'd gathered up the folds of his himation and made his way back down, the bundle carefully unwound and lying open.

"This is amazing, thank you," he muttered in awe, turning his miniature over in with small and gentle motions, the wonder plain on his face. He hurried over to the little shrine by the door and cleared a space for it in the very centre; a move that struck him as just slightly blasphemous to Hestia's pride. It was too large and bright to fit in with the rest but it was still a part, a little piece of Selinuntius effortlessly slotted into Melos's home.

"It's nothing, I figured you could do with a little more divine protection," he said, flippant to cover the unexpected emotion. "Anyway, where's this amphora everyone was telling me about?"

Melos reluctantly dragged himself away from the statuette with one final, loving adjustment and crossed the house to rummage in a mound of clattering terracotta in the corner. He took the opportunity to look around the house while his host was occupied; it was a cosy place, small but tidy if a little bare, the barrels of loose fleece against the wall emitting a mild sour smell that permeated.

"Sorry, I couldn't find a kylix," Melos said, handing him a bowl with a rueful shrug.

"Were you robbed while you were in Syracuse?" he asked, snapping his head back round to take in the empty shelves and barren floors with a more critical eye.

"No, it's nothing like that!" Melos said, palms up defensively. "It's just that Clea's dowry was supposed to be half the sheep, but Agathon's got a couple of brothers and been alone for a while. He didn't have enough for two so I gave them what they needed to be comfortable, and her loom, spindles and all of the things she'd made went with her too."

"You're a really easy mark," he said, taking a long and awkward drink that sloshed to tickle down his neck. He sat the empty bowl down on the low table. "In hindsight, I'm glad you got mugged by those kids."

Melos paused with the bowl raised halfway and lowered it, shifting his weight to rest his forearms on his knees.

"Me too."

The atmosphere slid by degrees as they looked each other over, the gratitude and affection pulling hard in his ribs before it dragged him to his feet to slide his palm across rough stubble, hooking his fingertips behind a strong jaw. 

"So, do you want to carry on where we left off?" he murmured, straightening again to unhook and unwind the himation that whispered to the fleece rug.

The open face stilled, brow furrowing as he flicked through memories of skin to hit the right moment; he could see it take hold and that solid determination he loved so much take over. Wine discarded, he yanked him down onto his lap and crushed their mouths together with insistent lips and wet tongue that he opened for, sliding against other to suck, bite and pant heat between them.

Melos broke the contact for a heartbeat to untie the cord at his waist and pull his tunic clear over his head, the rough wool tickling his face as it sailed past and he could close the gap between them again. Hands dropped to hot skin, sticky from their days in the sun and solid with strength gentled to an insistent tug at his ass. He traced fingertips along sheer scar tissue, mapping the tiny bumps of needle and thread against the depressed and smooth slices in an expanse of soft skin and faint hair, the memory adding an edge of urgency to the movement of his lips. He trailed his lingering touched around his back and felt the parallel there, wide and long, tripping along it to grasp and pull him closer. Melos's hips rolled below him, hardness grinding against his own and the lust in him flared brighter, breaking the kiss to sigh loudly against his shoulder; Melos took the opportunity to suck a bruise into his neck in a sharp blossoming of pain.

"You have any oil?" Selinuntius asked, their faces so close that he grazed earlobe as he spoke.

Melos grunted against the still-stinging mark and pressed down on Selinuntius's stomach, shuffling him backwards until they could stand.

"I'll go get it."

The separation was maddening, a chill coming over his shoulders as he shuffled his way over to the bed, rein-tired joints struggling his belt free and the knot beneath it, his heated cock finally springing free. He lay himself out on the bed, legs spread as he took his shaft in his hand for a few slow, teasing strokes, and the other trailed down his stomach through the thatch of pubic hair to leisurely circle his hole in delicate touches.

Melos turned back to him and froze, eyes wide, bottle clenched in a fist. He watched the long swallow, eyes darting up and down.

"You want me to..fuck you?"

He allowed himself to imagine it, not for the first time; Melos scrabbling at the stone wall for purchase while he fucked into him from behind, a hand twisted in that long ponytail and pulling tight. Heat simmered in him at the image but it wasn't what he needed, not in that moment. 

"D'you want to?" he replied, doubt surfacing for the first time.

"I want to," shot back instantly, the fire back in his eyes and mouth set. 

Melos came towards him at last, dropping the bottle to the blankets as he untied on his own loincloth. The stopper came away with a quiet pop, the olive smell in his nose as soon as the first drop hit his outstretched fingers. He could feel eyes watch him as he nudged a fingertip against the tight ring of his asshole, legs flexing wider to put on a show. He pushed in and then out, timed with a long stroke up to the head of his dick, pulling back down as his hand drove back inside his own heat in a languid rhythm. His eyes drifted closed to savour the sensation and the buzz of anticipation that was diffusing through him, more potent than any liquor. He crawled carefully onto the blankets, his body dark against the light of the fire and took a loose hold of the oiled hand. It was barely enough to stop him from moving but the imposition earned a playful glare, and his fingers twitched in the air.

"Can I get you ready instead?" Melos asked, staring intently at the wrist in his grasp, colour beginning to darken his cheeks.

"Yeah," he replied hoarsely, absently patting across the blanket to retrieve the bottle.

He couldn't stop drinking in the soft concentration that Melos embodied as his first finger breached him, big and rough even through the slick coating, his other hand running tickling lines across his ribs; feathering across a nipple before coming to rest as a comforting pinning strength to his side. The pace was slow as he eased in and back, his own hand slowing to keep pace, catching a trickle of pre-come that mixed with the oil on his hand.

Another finger, scissoring wide so he could feel the burn as the press left his side and trailed further down him, brushing so close to his groin that their knuckles grazed before planting it on his inner thigh to prise it wider still, calluses harsh against his quickly sensitising skin, the steady thrusting digits speeding up ever so slightly as another plunged in. They crooked deep inside of him to drag brusquely over his prostate, the resulting spike of need so strong that he had to clench his fist around the base of his cock to countermand the wave of pleasure that flooded through him.

"Now," he grunted out. 

"Are you sure?" 

"Get in me if you don't want this over before it starts," he huffed through a grin.

His eyes closed as the fingers withdrew, trying to collect himself in the brief moment of peace. The wooden slats below him creaked and there was a fleeting gentle kiss to his lips; he opened his eyes to the swiftly retreating Melos, sweet smile in place as he concentrated on the prick in his hand, the head inching into him with a slow stretch. It was thick, burning and perfect, and pulled Melos's name from him in a burst of need and relief from the rising tension of months apart and years without. 

He reached up blindly to pull a shoulder down, dragging them back into a kiss that deepened as Melos sank further in then weakened to wine-scented breath pooling between them as he thrust in shallow motions, both loathe to leave each other's mouths and faces cradled against each other.

It still wasn't enough, even as the speed picked up with long, tantalising drags against his rim as he pulled out before churning him up all over again, the desperate and vain need to be wrecked all-consuming. All that was important was to forget everything that he'd dredged up from the wreckage of his past, the years of uncertainty and days of only knowing death. They were in that moment together, whole and free, and that was everything. He hooked a knee around Melos's back, tugging him just that little bit closer.

"Fuck, Melos, fuck harder," he groaned.

Melos drew back, eyelashes glistening wet and just as desperate, and he heaved himself up off the bed to drive himself harder in. Hips snapped against his own, hard and fast enough that he threw his head back with the sensation of it and his hand falling from his cock to the rough skins; he scraped along them as he was moved, revelling in the rush of punishing thrusts as Melos threatened to tear him apart.

"Seline," he heard mumbled somewhere above him. "Seline, you're incredible, I can't... I can't believe that it's me." 

The words rolled off of him; he was lost in the rhythm that was slowing ever so steadily, and he could have screamed in frustration when Melos slid free, the cold emptiness a bitter blow when he had been cresting so high. 

Fingers trailed through the fine hairs of his beard, vanishing to then grope at his ass, and a complaint was still on the tip of his tongue when a cool, clammy hand slid under the small of his back to lift him up, legs dangling free in the air as Melos entered him again; slowly at first and then with all of his strength, slamming against his prostate over and over. He felt himself come apart so that he was only blissfully aware of Melos cradling his weight, bruising into him as he murmured soothing words into their shared space. 

He wanted to touch his aching cock as it bounced against his stomach to leave sticky strands but he couldn't move his weight from his elbows as he was dragged about the bed; he needed to touch the man who was half himself but the strength was seeping from his bones to leave him passive and moaning, too close to bear the rising pleasure, the sound of skin. 

He shuddered as the hold at his back shifted, thrusts stuttering as Melos brought his hand around his straining shaft and that was all he took to come, shaking and tensing from the ferocity of it, ass still held aloft as he was carried through the waves and Melos's cock pumped into him until he pulled free without warning. Selinuntius was lowered gently to the bed, chest tight as he pulled himself up onto his elbows and watched those beautiful eyes squeeze shut as Melos finished himself off, panting harshly as Selinuntius was painted with warm droplets of come; he dropped fingers to his chest to smear it through his fingers in blurry happiness as Melos collapsed beside him, tunic fished up from the floor and dabbed haphazardly across his abdomen.

"Sorry, I didn't mean..." Melos started, but Selinuntius scrambled the last of his strength to roll over and plant a sloppy kiss against his mouth, sliding across his cheek as the energy bled from him.

The last thing he saw before he fell asleep was the little glistening form of his alabaster Melos at the altar, the wings at his feet catching the glow of the embers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for Hippo 
> 
> Erastes/eromenos - the older/younger participant in pederasty  
> the regional ancient greek laws for both freedmen and adoption are horrible and impenetrable


	5. Chapter 5

Life carried on, slowing and sweetening as the months passed. 

Syracuse had continued simmering with unrest that grew louder and more widespread, spilling out of the assemblymen and into the region at large, and it was only a matter of time until Dionysius was gone. The constant winks and nods from the conspirators hadn't waned; neither had his reputation as a symbol, or at least half a symbol, and it was worse when Melos visited him. He would be picked out in any crowd, no matter how openly he wore the sword and how intimidatingly he swaggered through the alleys, and they would spend their days with doors locked and shuttered closed. It wasn't a terrible compromise.

He'd been spending more of his time out of town but when a man claiming to be Alexis had turned up, insisting that the travel was making him more suspicious he started the long process of taking himself out of the situation. His commissions were slowly finished off as he got news that the ruler out at Taormina would be willing to take him on for a new project, and so he became a resident of Messina. It was a beautiful town, a steady and sane ruler, and it was much closer to Itake. 

The village had become somewhat of a second home, especially since he had left Syracuse, and the acerbic attitudes of some of the more insecure inhabitants had gradually settled around him into a begrudging acceptance, then into a joking and more casual atmosphere. There were still jokes at Melos's expense about his association with a fancy artist but they were less pointed the more time passed, Melos repeatedly proved his worth now he had an in, and Selinuntius kept returning. Clea welcomed him with open arms each time, her husband standing gloomy at her shoulder and complaining that she needs to get out of the rain for the sake of the baby, but she never listens and forges out to catch his horse anyway. Melos would find him with her when he came down from the hills, being put to work churning butter, chopping wood or some other menial task that didn't require too much skill. 

There were a few more sheep now, bought from the little anonymous gifts that had appeared at their doorsteps, and some of the clutter of Selinuntius's house had travelled on past Taormina to find itself in the shelves and corners of the home that was slowly becoming theirs. After every parting they met each other as naturally as though they'd never been away, the heat and passion as addictive as the companionship and compassion, an intimacy that sustained him even when they were in different cities. 

They knew each other, both in their actions and their bodies, and though they hadn't encountered anything like the danger that had haunted those first days there was an intensity whenever they met as they soon dissolved into harsh kisses and desperate, bestial thrusts as though to remind each other that they were still alive, they'd made it again and they were still together. 

Thin shutters were no match for them when they were caught in the trance of it, blood high and all the rest of the world fading away into nothing, and the hamlet had been aware of the depth of their relationship from very early on into his visits. He was asked who the woman was on his third. They'd ducked into the house to avoid it at the time, but when it was repeated the first Melos had claimed that he was, and could they leave Seline out of it; Seline hadn't left himself out of it and had responded loudly and with the crudest language of the Syracusan slums that if he had it his way he'd never have Melos's cock outside of his body. The rumours had kept to themselves after that.

They'd settled into this new life so easily that when Raisa turned up on Melos's doorway early in the new year it was a shock to their system.

"I heard the story in Palermo," she said, smiling wide. "I didn't believe it until I saw that statue out by Catania, and I knew who'd made it right away."

She flicked her hair back behind her shoulders in a silver wave and pulled the necklace free. 

"I tried looking for you in Syracuse, Seline, but nobody had much of an idea where you'd gone, so I thought I would try checking in on Melos instead. It was a great idea to leave that statue out there, although I think people thought this was an offering or it would have been long gone."

Selinuntius finally gathered himself enough to move again, grabbing her in a tight embrace that startled another laugh from her.

"You were always going to pop up again, weren't you?" he asked, his throat tightening.

"It's not like me to leave loose ends, I guess," she shrugged against him.

"Do you want to come in?" Melos said, stepping backward to give her room to enter the house. She grinned, whoops and hollers from a couple of the villagers following her in as they closed the door behind them.

They'd only just finished their evening meal, a wide array of fruits and nuts splayed haphazardly across the table, and they took the pack from her hand and sat her down in a stool where she started picking at them absent-mindedly, looking about her at the walls with their lambing ropes hung up next to the basic stone cutting tools he'd slowly been seeding the place with so he could bring stone down to work at while he was there, and she lingered for a while on the very out of place Hermes-Melos standing proud on the altar.

"It looks like you're settling in here," she purred, turning to him. 

"It's a nice part of the world," he replied warmly, handing her a cup of wine that she took gratefully. "There's a lot more to do here than you might think."

"Of course," she replied, and drank deeply to hide her smile.

Melos pulled another stool up so they could flank her, and she looked between them.

"I'm so glad to see you both doing well," she whispered, her gaze dropping.

"Me too," Melos replied, pulling her free hand into his own. "I worried when you never turned up."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't face going back and one of you..." She trailed off, and the memory hung vividly between the three of them.

He knew most of what had happened between Raisa and Melos on the road from the snippets that he'd been told over the months, but she had been in an impossible position that neither of them with their self interest and innate decisions could compare to; they were trying to trust another person to prove to themselves that they were worthy of trust, whereas she was trying to save someone by condemning another. It was infinitely worse, and a position that Calippus had borne mostly through a love of devilment rather than serious introspection. Raisa had always been a giving person, too quick to pick up the lost souls and doomed causes that again and again hurt her, but her optimism and love always kept her from her own self-interest. It was that selflessness and hope that had kept her by him in all those years of drunken ignominy; hope that he could be better again as much as hope that he would love her as he had before everything had crumbled down around him. To have to choose between people was something that she would have hated more than anything, and even worse to disguise it as doing it for their own good. 

Empathy rose in him, quickly to be drowned out by a fierce flash of self-derision at having put her in that place. He would still have volunteered for Melos, without question, but he would have done pretty much anything if she could have been left out of it. 

She shifted in the quiet, nibbling at an almond.

"It was picking at me the more I tried to forget, but I couldn't leave the rumours alone once I heard; it was worse not to know."

Selinuntius reached forward and took a familiar hand in his own, running his thumb over her long fingers.

"We're doing fine, and thank you for coming to find us. What are you doing with yourself?"

She squeezed back.

"Same thing, different city. It's safer out there than in Syracuse even if it's not as fancy, but I'm finding my feet."

"Will you go back to Palermo?" Melos asked, eyes huge and sad.

"It's home now." She sighed, and turned to him. "Seline's gone, Dionysius is only getting more paranoid and the people I know are either being picked out as instigators or going to ground. Maybe I'll go back to Syracuse one day, when it's all over, but not yet. It's too many bad memories and they're building up too fast. Better to start over again."

She turned back to Selinuntius and trailed a touch lightly along his bare arm before leaning in to press a kiss to his lips, so light it almost wasn't there.

"Is there any way we could have a proper goodbye? After all these years..."

"Of course."

He pressed back, trying to let her feel the regret that had riddled him since he'd realised that she was gone and he couldn't apologise; he'd been too consumed by his despair in the long months she'd cared for him to take notice of what she had put herself through. 

She turned back to Melos, who was looking between them in confusion.

"I still need to give you all that kindness that I promised you on the road, too."

He frowned, and looked to Selinuntius for confirmation. He slid a hand to his knee and squeezed in reassurance, then pulled Raisa's hair back from her neck and pressed a kiss to her nape, just above the strap of her necklace.

"Sure." 

She relaxed, gently cupping Melos's face. 

"Thank you."

"Is this a good thing you're doing?" Melos asked her, an edge of uncertainty to him.

"This time you're doing a good thing for me," she replied. Selinuntius couldn't follow and a strange moment passed between the two of them before Melos touched the back of her hand, smiling wistfully. 

She broke the quiet, slipping from her stool to the rough fleece stretched out below them to settle between Melos's knees, deftly untying his undergarments so she could pull his flaccid cock free. He was staring down at her, still visibly on edge and hands hovering about her head so Selinuntius shifted to take her seat. He gathered him into his arms as well as he could, following a smattering of kisses with a deep and wet push into his mouth, which was echoed back to him eagerly. It was an odd reminder of how familiar they each were with him, and not with each other.

He could feel the effects of Raisa's attention through the body against his own as it shivered and heated, arching away from him and towards her as the quiet suction noises from below started to drown out their kiss. Sitting back he could take in the heavy breathing and flushed face with a sense of pride at their shared efforts, and his own cock filled at the sight of her swallowing him down, flesh flushed dark and her eyes heavy lidded.

The fleece was soft under his knees as he dropped behind, running his hands along her curves to fondle her breasts; a muffled hum of appreciation prompted am answering groan from Melos who gripped at the wood below him, his knuckles whitening from the effort. Selinuntius pulled at her to rut his hardness between her legs, the layers of clothing muting the sensation but patience was impossible when Raisa moved back against him and he could see the shudder go through Melos as she used the distance to pay attention to his head, a strange intimacy by proxy that made his head spin.

Her dress was a light linen, and he gathered handfuls of it by the hem to drape over her back and expose her, the little movements of her body slowing as the cold air hit her at once. He grinned as he spread her lips with careful fingers and he watched the shiver run along the length of her spine before he ducked down to run his tongue along her slit, sinking in as she bucked against him. He revelled in the smell of her as he lapped at her clit, stroking himself as she pushed against his mouth.

It had been so long but he remembered her body innately, all the little spots that she loved coming back to mind as he dove into her. Something nudged at his hand where it was kneading at her ass and he found his fingers being threaded through large and well-known ones, Melos looking over at him with a mix of desperation and fear, and he worried that he was remembering too much of the long run home. He squeezed tight and it was returned to him, the fear dissipating somewhat. He relaxed again, sucking against Raisa's clit and seeing her appreciation being echoed through Melos where he couldn't see it himself. 

He gave her a last long lick then shuffled back. He smoothed his free hand across her ass, rubbing circles into it as he caught his breath.

"Are you okay?," he asked both.

She left Melos's cock with a wet suckle, a quick "inside" all she said before dropping back to him. He shrugged at Melos, who looked half lost as she peppered his cock with kisses, a move so familiar he could almost feel it along his own length. He squeezed the tremoring palm in his own and guided his cock to her opening, slipping deep into her as she moved back against him with a satisfied sigh. She was warm, velvet and delicious, welcoming him in as she always had until his hips grazed her thighs and he paused, leaning over her back to appreciate the view as well as the feeling when she moved between him and Melos, pulling herself off him as she swallowed more of Melos, and his hips snapped to meet her as she reared back again. 

Melos moved as well, leaning over so that their mouths almost met, ragged breaths close by him matching his own as he thrust in, at times coming so close that his lips caught the tip of a nose or the jut of a chin before he pulled his hips back or Raisa pushed forward and they split apart again. 

She felt incredible about him, a wet heat that moved and tightened around him as they all moved together, and with the pressure against his hand to anchor him he inched closer to the edge, the melancholic memories of the last time he'd been with Raisa looming at the edge of his mind while the familiar pleasured sounds of both his lovers heated his blood, moving him, thrusting deep as he lifted his and Melos's clasped hands to rest above his heart, his other pulling at her waist.

There was a shift in their rhythm, the sound of their sex changing and he realised that Raisa had stopped moving against him as the sounds she made deepened and roughened; she was holding still as Melos fucked her throat, a steadying hand against her shoulder as he his brow furrowed over closed eyes, hips moving with a fierce power that he rarely saw and fingers ground under his grip. There was a fragment of the run floating to the surface in that moment, he knew, and it pulled at a possessiveness deep in him. He came hard and sudden, slamming himself into her a last few times to collapse against her back on shaking arms, the ugliness of the emotion that had overtaken him burning shame through him and he dragged his flagging cock free of her and sank to the floor.

The hand that had been digging bruises into Raisa's hips gentled and rubbed against the marks that already bloomed under her skin, but before he could move in to lick his come out of her she moved again. Patting at the wide thigh in front of her, she lifted herself off his cock with a loud, slick pop and a quiet noise of loss from Melos. She turned to face him, her lips red and swollen from use and her voice rough; "thank you, Seline, but I don't think I can handle that sort of gentleness today." 

He reached out to her, pulling her to him in a firm kiss fuelled by the last waves of that aimless jealousy and she melted against him, running her nails along his exposed chest. He pulled at the cord of her dress as Melos pulled it over her head, and he watched in drowsy awe as she stood naked and beautiful before him, ushering Melos back onto the seat he'd abandoned to get better leverage. She turned back to Selinuntius and with her hands braced against Melos's thighs she slowly sank down onto his cock, eyes sliding closed as she bounced experimentally to get used to the new dimensions. 

The sound it made was obscene, flesh slopping through the mess of his come and she reached to grab the hand that had so recently held Melos's, holding tight as she lifted herself again, this time with the added force of Melos thrusting up against her to come together with a filthy wet noise. The pace they established was firm and brutal, Melos focused and eyes closed while Raisa never looked away from him with a crushing sadness radiating from her as she rose and fell, the orgasm that overtook her clenching her tight and forcing tears from her eyes as Melos shuddered and came below her, and he couldn't look away.

Melos slipped out of her with a slow, satisfied sigh as he pulled her carefully to his chest, their mixed come dripping slowly to the fleece and Selinuntius had to dart forward to catch them as they wobbled together on the little stool. He guided them slowly over to their rickety bed, where they all lazily struggled out of their clothes and collapsed together, far too narrow for all three of them.

Selinuntius woke first, naked and sticky, and gingerly retrieved his limbs from the tangle of bodies against his own with grumbled complaints from them. It was tricky but eventually he was free, stumbling on wooden legs to open the window onto the ugly crow of the cockerels their neighbours kept. The limp that normally gave him no trouble always reared itself in the morning, the old poorly knit breaks a low ache that he rubbed at absently as he sat with honey dipped bread half way to his mouth, contemplating the two bodies still wrapped in their flimsy blanket.

Melos had revealed himself almost immediately to be an early riser, always out on the hills by the time Selinuntius had made it much further than emptying his bowels, but he had days. After a couple of mornings together he would weaken and lie later, ignoring the cries of the sheep and other herders both to snuggle a little closer and breathe into his neck, so it was no surprise when he flopped over and planted a sleepy good morning peck to Raisa's cheek. 

He awoke almost instantly once he registered the lack of facial hair, and Selinuntius had to swallow a laugh at the shock that plastered his face. Raisa, for her part, drowsily reached over and returned it square on the lips.

"Are you wanting to go again, big guy?" she mumbled, sitting up to rub the sleep from her eyes.

Melos looked up to him, rubbing at his nose in a familiar nervous gesture, and he shrugged in response.

"What do you want me to do?" Melos asked.

"Can you open me up? I'm assuming you know how."

Selinuntius couldn't help the bark that ripped out of his chest as Melos stiffened, then blushed. He gave a couple of abrupt nods and reached wordlessly for the oil they kept below the bed frame, a wide grin spreading across Raisa's face.

It was strange to see them together and from afar; there was a nervousness to Melos that he didn't remember ever seeing when they were together, the intensity of their beginning carrying over so easily that this was the the first time he'd seen that aspect of him. He was almost disappointed that he'd never seen it before, but the greater part was glad that they'd been such a natural fit. The soft sadness in Raisa was more familiar, an uncomfortable echo of the many times she had tried to comfort him but this time sweetened with a lightness that she had lost for a long time.

It was somewhat like the passing of a torch to see them moving together; before he had been scarred by the loss of his mother, the love of his father that twisted and warped through his appointment and then the accident and confession that took his art from him and Raisa with it, leaving him with the blessed ignorance of drink. Now everything was changed and he had his craft back, along with his soul in Melos. She had been right; he had loved her but it had burned out under the suffocating weight of his grief and would never recover. It was lost to the past, whereas Melos was the future; both open hearted and kind but Melos's affection was both more complex and all consuming. They were a balanced unit when he had always relied on Raisa, even before his father had died, and she deserved far better than that. She was strong, resourceful and drew people to her with ease. She would be far stronger without the sorry weight he had been around her neck.

Melos had three fingers in her ass now, the motions slow and sure as if he was unsure if she would break, and she was watching him closely as she jerked him slowly in pace with the fingers entering her. He was hovering, ducking the odd kiss to her neck or cheek or lips in little chaste touches that seemed at odds with the situation. Raisa beckoned him over with a look. 

He went straight to Melos, holding him close and kissing the corner of his jaw with all the reassurance he could infuse it with. He responded enthusiastically, the kiss sliding into his mouth and he was pushed onto his back as Melos drove his tongue hungrily against his own, pulling away with clear reticence to brush against his lips and then finally away enough he could make out the shy smile against his own. 

"Mornin'," he whispered.

"Mornin', Seline."

Raisa moved beside them, turning to slip a knee over his own and slithering down him with a dangerous look in her eyes. 

"Are you ready?" she asked him, rolling his balls in one hand while the other dragged the backs of smooth fingernails along the length of his cock as it filled under her touch.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" he replied, his concentration splintering as she applied herself to all the sensitive points she knew so well; snaking lingering presses to the vein that ran along his shaft and pulling back his foreskin to pepper kisses across his head.

"I've been in worse scrapes," she said, and swallowed him down to his base. 

He had been completely unprepared, and his hips stuttered up to meet her before he could control himself but she rode it out, pulling the hair off of her face as she bobbed up and down, Melos appearing to suck bruises into his neck in a long wet trail down to his nipple, teasing it lightly between his teeth before claiming his lips again. 

Raisa pulled herself off of his cock, the chilled air torture against his sensitive flesh as she arranged herself to straddle his waist and gradually lowered herself down onto him with a sigh; he groaned into Melos's mouth, hands flying to grasp at the legs clamped around him. 

She moved, sliding up glacially before slamming back down against him so hard her necklace rattled. He broke away from Melos to shoot her a glare that she responded to with a smirk and a flick of her hair back over her shoulder, raising herself up to repeat the motion that had him dropping his head back against the blanket, the tainia at his temple rumpling loose. 

Melos was gone from the space beside him. Raisa was moving against him as he thrust up to her, the slaps loud amongst their heaving breaths and the little laughs she gave when she sank back down, and she was all he could focus on. Her smile was bright, her pale breasts bouncing heavily as she moved and he couldn't help but reach out to hold them, his thumbs flicking over her peaked nipples so she leaned towards him, a gasp breaking her rhythm.

The bed moved under them and knees knocked against his own, tanned hands steadying themselves at her waist as she turned back to look at Melos behind her, stilling and tilting forwards to let him have better access to her. He couldn't see his face, their bodies positioned that he was only a rough fringe above Raisa's shoulder but he felt him when he penetrated her; the suggestion of his cockhead rubbed against him through her walls. She moaned as he sank all the way in, and Selinuntius rubbed at her breasts and sides while she got used to it, her head bowed and breathing gradually settling out.

"That's quite a bit," she murmured, shifting a fraction and bracing her palms against his stomach.

They waited in silence for her sign, and it came in a short rotation of her hips. It was almost indiscernible but she repeated it more confidently, rolling between them. He could feel every tremor through her as she started to rise again, testing her strength.

She found her rhythm quickly, staring down at him with a blush high on her cheeks and he thrust up into her as she dropped down again, relishing the muted drag of Melos's cock against his as it began to move counter to him. Raisa threw her head back as he pushed back in and Selinuntius dropped his hands to her waist, just above the olive ones already there. She writhed above him, fingers on her clit as she took them both and craned herself around to reach Melos in a kiss; Melos who he could at last see with eyes wide and mouth gasping as he juddered, slipping out of her to stroke himself through the last of his orgasm with a groan, his come splattering across Raisa's ass. She trailed her free hand down his jaw, her pace steady and fingers working as she turned back to Selinuntius. He couldn't feel the loss of Melos, too close to his own climax as he drove up into her heat and she clamped down on him, whimpering high in the back of her throat as she came around him and triggered his own orgasm, wave after wave emptying into her that left him weak and hollowed out.

She lifted herself off his cock and slithered down his body to lie panting against his chest, Melos following soon after and they cooled together, tangled once more.

"That's quite the good morning," she whispered, sleep already pulling her into a doze, and he was struck with sudden gratitude to her that she'd not asked them their roles, and had accommodated their privacy. Melos pulled the blanket over her with infinite care and carded his fingers through her hair, smiling hazily across at him. 

"I think we'll all be okay." 

"I think you're right," he said as he looked between Melos and Raisa, who even in her unconsciousness seemed happier than she had before and turned into him with a simple ease.

They slid down on either side of her and into sleep.

She recovered from her exertion quickly, the spring water bright on her lips she laughed at the nonsense anecdotes Selinuntius fed her along with their breakfast in bed. 

"I should be hitting the road soon," she said, and downed the last of the jug.

"You're welcome to stay," Melos reassured her.

"The locals aren't as bad as they look," Selinuntius supplied, getting a look from Melos for his trouble.

"No, I really should go. I'd be better to leave early if I want to hit civilisation before sundown, and now you've finally learned how to let someone in I don't think I have much of a place here," she winked, and he felt the heat come racing to his face even as the protest died in his throat. 

She eased herself from the bed with a shudder.

"Plus, I passed a beautiful spot in the river that would make a great place to clean up."

"You're welcome back any time," he said lamely.

"Maybe I'll take you up on that. I need to... to come to terms with a lot of what happened still, although this has certainly helped."

Raisa dressed swiftly and soon they were clustered by the open door, unease bubbling in Selinuntius's chest as she kissed them both softly on the cheek. 

"Do you want this back? I can't seem to keep it on me these days," she said, pulling the strap of her necklace free of her neck. He could still remember how it had shone in the sunlight in the vendor's stall, and how her eyes had lit up the same when he'd given in to her.

"Keep it," he said, the nostalgia strangling him. "Suits you than it ever would me."

She smiled and kissed him again, truly happy for once, and he let himself believe that she still had some good memories of him after all.

A wave, and then she was off. 

They watched her go, shoulder to warm shoulder in the cool morning air and deaf to the mumbles from the few stragglers in the streets. He didn't want it to feel like cutting loose ends or letting out a held breath but it did, the sentiment crawling over his skin until he dragged a shocked Melos back inside, crushing him against the wall, hidden from the street, and leaning up to slide his tongue deep in his mouth and root himself there. This was his life now, this man, and he wouldn't let lingering regret tarnish it. Melos startled to life underneath him, returning the passion eagerly for a sweet minute before gently pushing him away with a giddy smile.

"I'd better get going too," he said, pulling on his sandals and picking up his crook from the door. He made his way up the winding road to the pasture as the other tardy shepherds waved him on, his huge silhouette disappearing over the horizon. 

It had turned into his favourite part of the day, to watch him leave with the complete certainty that he would always be back. He sighed, relaxing as the fresh spring breeze streamed around him, and turned back inside. There was an idea forming at the back of his mind for a sculpture of Ares, Aphrodite and Hephaestus that he really wanted to get down before it left him.

He closed the door behind him, home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Yule!


End file.
